Shoes are part of the garments used to cover and protect feet, having many shapes such as, but not limited to, shoes, high heels, boots, sandals or tennis.
Shoes are used for various reasons, including feet protection, hygiene or decoration only.
Often socks or stockings are used with shoes, or on the contrary, bare feet when using sandals.
In the prior art there are patent documents describing sandals with exchangeable strips or straps, such as U.S. Pat. No. 7,222,441 related to a sandal with an interchangeable strip including a sole portion and a section encasing or surrounding the instep. The section encasing the instep is removable attached to a first and second side ends, adjacent to the inner and outer edges of the sole portion, respectively. When the section encasing the instep is removed from the sole portion, a second section substitutes said first section surrounding the instep. The section surrounding the instep is attached to the sole portion using at least a pair of side hooks having the size and shape to removable engage a pair of engaging hooks located at the sole portion. The engaging hooks are moved from a first engaging position to a second disengaging position by at least one engaging actuator. Lateral hooks and engaging hooks may be horizontally or vertically oriented. One alternative section surrounding the instep has a portion separating the toe and securing the sole side and front portions. However, a drawback in this type of sandals is that the hook-engaging strip ends and the sole groove structure are more complex, thus, the manufacturing tool kit is more expensive.
Likewise, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,540,098, a sandal with an exchangeable slipper is described, which allows the user to have a unique pair of soles and multiple slippers, thus allowing having sandals of multiple styles and colors without having to purchase and store multiple entire sandals. The sandals have a sole and a top portion wherein said top portion is generally comprised by strips having a “Y” shape. The top portion at the “Y” upper end may vary in size and design as the top portion has at least three different strip ends being used as attachment points to the sole. The front attachment point, at the “Y” bottom, is joined at the sole front using a first opening extending from the top surface to the bottom surface at the front part of the sole. The rear attachment points are located at the “Y” upper strap ends. These might be a single point at each side, or due to aesthetics, these points may divert in two or more strip ends. Each side may have a different number of strip ends. This kind of sandals have the great drawback of including screws to secure the top portion rear attachment ends in “Y” shape to the sole, wherein the screw threads may wear out with time and stop working.